Elon takes 20 seconds to pick…

…the most difficult challenge in life

At the World Governments Summit in 2017, Elon Musk was asked ‘what’s the biggest challenge in life?’  You’ll see in this clip that he really gives the question some thought. There’s a full 20 seconds of deliberation. Finally, he replies:

‘Just thinking about how to spend time’.

Click on the image to watch the 30-second video on Instagram.

This is his greatest challenge, even as one of the world's most influential innovators. And it’s the biggest challenge for us all. Because it encompasses everything else, love, friendship, mental health, physical health, philanthropy, education, purpose, freedom, belief, creativity, resilience, respect, communication - just, literally, everything. And the challenge of how to spend our time is constant; there is no possibility of solving it. Time is life’s only truly irretrievable commodity. 

Here are ten questions to help think about how best to spend time. 

1. What do I really have to do today?

2. How would I like to feel at the end of the day?

3. What’s important to have done by the end of the week?

4. What would I like to have achieved by the end of the year?

5. What brings me most joy? Which activities make my heart feel biggest?

6. What are the responsibilities I care about most?

7. Who do I want to become? Am I on track? 

8. Who do I want to spend time with? Who should I be spending more time with?

9. Which activities contribute most to my concept of success?

10. What should I spend less time on?

Nir Eyal (author of Hooked, Indistractable) warns ‘if you don’t plan your time, someone else will’. This isn’t just a soundbite. Inboxes, notifications, social media and much smartphone functionality are all potent, pernicious examples of our time being eaten into by other agents. The only way to make sure it’s you spending your time, in the way that you intend, is knowing what your intentions really are (the list above may help), set them, and put up some guardrails so that you actually see each through. 

Six years later, Musk came back to the same conference. Again the question of time came up and he’s still grappling with it, but perhaps with a little more wisdom than before, ‘It’s not my intention to work like crazy…a mere 80-hour work week would be fine’.

(I wrote previously about single-tasking, palate-cleansing Elon Musk, as revealed by the Isaacson biography.)